


the witching hour

by erebones



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 02:19:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15451230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: Beau takes first watch. Caduceus makes tea.





	the witching hour

**Author's Note:**

> prompted by joulssance on tumblr. I was itching to try my hand at writing Caduceus and this was the perfect opportunity. <3

Everything hurts. Beau braces herself against the wall, black flat to the cold stone, and wills her body to knit itself back together. Maybe, if she grits her teeth hard enough, if she _thinks_ hard enough, she can take this fucking bone-deep ache inside her and crack it open. Find relief.

Movement at the corner of her eye. She turns her head sharply, sharp enough to feel a stab of hot pain seize her neck in its implacable grip. She sees grey and green and a smudge of pink and unwinds again. “Don’t fuckin’ do that to me, man. I’m jumpy.”

Caduceus sidles up to her in silence, a little smile on his face. Maybe it’s the dark, or maybe it’s just the twenty-something hours of activity weighing down her head, but there’s something about that smile that’s... familiar. In a good way. His eyes droop like hers do, heavy-lidded and slow as he muffles a yawn behind one giant hand.

“You are injured, Beauregard.”

“It’s just Beau, man. Okay? I don’t do the _Beauregard_ shit anymore.” Caleb’s the only one to get away with it, these days, and she’s decided not to think too hard about why that is.

“My apologies,” Caduceus says slowly. Everything about him is slow right now, like Caleb had smeared molasses across his palm without anyone seeing. But everything about Beau is slow, too. Slow and steeped in dark, dank silence. Like an undisturbed grave. “How about a deal?”

Beau eyes him askance, clasping her staff a little more tightly. “What kind of deal?”

“I will not call you _Beauregard_ any longer. If.” He holds up one finger. “You agree not to call me _Deuces_.”

Beau snorts in spite of herself. _This guy. This... fuckin’ whackjob_. “Yeah, all right. What is it, Cad-ew-shuss?”

Blink. “Caduceus.” He shuffles against the wall a little, down, down, until he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her. His fluff of strawberry hair still reaches Beau’s shoulder. “If it is too strenuous for you, Clay will suffice.”

“Clay.” Beau tastes it on her tongue. It seems so bland and unremarkable for such a colorful creature—nothing like the ribaldry of _Mollymauk Tealeaf_ —but it suits him, in an odd way. “Caduceus Clay. What about... Caddy?”

_Mollymauk Tealeaf, Molly to my friends. And we’re friends now, aren’t we?_

“Caddy,” the firbolg echoes. His voice is deep and scraping in the tiny room, echoing off the walls like slow-growing moss. “It’s better than the other, but… we will see. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Well, you let me know when you do.” Beau tips her head back against the wall and sighs. Fuck, she’s tired. _Why did I offer to take first watch? Oh, right, because I’m trying to be a better person._ “Fuck you, Molly,” she mutters under her breath. The empty silence gaping after it feels like a punch to the stomach.

“Your friend. The one you put in the ground.” Caduceus leans forward, dragging the pads of his fingers along the ground. “Molly?”

“Mollymauk.” She falters on the second syllable, and loses the last name altogether. It burns in her esophagus like a firefly trapped under glass, blinking and flaring until, slowly, in pieces, it runs out of air and gives up the ghost. Beau rubs her dry cheek. “He was. Important. To us, I mean, not like—an _important person_ or whatever—”

“He was not royalty, then,” Caduceus suggests. His coarse voice is light with good humor, but Beau doesn’t feel defensive.

“In his own mind, maybe.” She shuts her eyes against the dimness. “Aren’t you supposed to be resting? I’ve got like two more hours before my watch is up.”

“Hmm. Nothing wrong with a little bit of company. Or a little bit of tea.”

Beau smells sulphur and smoke, and when she opens her eyes Caduceus has drawn a pattern on the stone floor that now burns with a cold white light. Through her goggles the glare is blinding. She slips them up her forehead and squints, watching as the firbolg produces two cups from his weatherbeaten cloak. A few muttered words fills them with water, and he sets them on the sigil to warm.

“You’re just… always ready, huh? Like that.” She snaps her fingers.

“I do not—ah, a figure of speech. Yes. Like that.” He snaps his fingers, too, and then beams at his own hand for a moment as if delighted. A little bit of that childlike wonder that Beau was just remembering how to feel again. Before. “Sit with me,” Caduceus says. Beau wonders if he can read thoughts. If he can read the spinning dervish in her head that’s threatening to knock all her carefully-placed dominos out of order.

She sits. Crosslegged opposite him, the hallway to her right, the weighted trapdoor at her left, Caleb’s silver thread a gossamer shimmer in the light.

“You chill with the dead,” Beau says. “Or something.”

Caduceus just looks at her. His face is illuminated from below by the glowing sigil, turning his blue-grey skin to gleaming silver and deep, muted charcoal. His eyes flare bright rosy-lavender behind pale pink lashes. He is steady and unflinching. Beau drops her gaze.

“I just. Was wondering.”

“Ask.”

She grits her teeth. The firefly ignites again, beating its wings against the glass in desperation. “What happens, after?”

“Many things. Some of which have been documented with reasonable certainty. Some of which have not.”

“Fuck, you’re a piece of work,” Beau mutters. Cryptic bullshit. “Does it—hurt?”

“Does what hurt?”

“Y’know, the fires of hell or whatever. Is hell a thing?”

“There are planes of existence beyond our own, yes. But that’s not what you’re really asking, is it.” Caduceus waves his hand and the sigil goes dim—not extinguished altogether, but easier on the eyes. The heat billowing off it fades, and he reaches back into his cloak for a little satchel. “The answers you seek are complicated and are not designed to offer comfort.”

Beau rubs furiously at her nose. “I don’t _want_ to be comforted. I just want to know the truth.”

The cups are full of flowers. Dried petals that soften and uncurl their brittle edges as they float in the hot water. Caduceus passes her a cup, and she takes it without complaining. “The truth,” he says, gently, “is that your friend is not suffering. He belongs to the Raven Queen, now, and that is no terrible fate. Most mortals fear death, but death is not at ending. It is only a gateway, one that we all must pass through. Some sooner, others later. Some before their time.”

If she bows her head far enough, Beau thinks, maybe he won’t see the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “It didn’t feel like the right time,” she bites out.

“Does it ever?”

She breathes, and considers it. “Probably not. Except for assholes like—”

She gestures with one hand toward the hallway and beyond, to the mess hall where several corpses now bloom with gentle rot. When they burn this fucking place to the ground, the spores will float on the smoke and ash and land in the forest, distributing new life in a place that seems removed from time. Unliving. Fine poetry, if Beau felt inclined to appreciate it.

“Assholes like them,” Caduceus muses, “have been lingering in the shadow of that gate for a long time, I think. Denying its presence, but always feeling it looming over them. It can be ignored, for a little while. But not forever.”

With the tiny cup cradled in his enormous hands, Caduceus sips his tea. Beau copies him, and a scrap of silky-soft petal sticks to her tongue, tasting of honeysuckle and snapdragon.

“Tomorrow’s going to suck,” Beau says when half her tea is gone and her throat is no longer tangled up in unshed tears. “I’m really glad you’re with us, Caddy.”

Caduceus smiles down at his own cup, empty now. “I am glad to be of service. Here. Beau.” He reaches toward her and lays a hand on her shoulder. “You are hurting. Will you let me take that burden from you?”

Beau takes an unsteady breath and reaches for the string around her neck, bearing one single red feather. “I don’t think this is the kind of pain you can take away.”

“Maybe not. But the physical ailment—that I can do.”

“Yeah, all right.” She shuts her eyes and grits her teeth. “Do it.”

Caduceus exhales long and slow, and warmth creeps into her body. Not from his hand on her shoulder, but from her belly, expanding outward in slow tendrils like flowers growing from a corpse. The ache of a long day and a hard fucking fight begin to fade. Not gone entirely, but the worst of it borne away—flecks of pollen on the breeze. Beau drops her head and sighs.

“Thanks, man.”

“It is no trouble, Beau.” He gives her a gentle pat and withdraws. “You may rest, if you like. Finish your tea first, it will help with the healing.”

She wants to decline him. It’s her job to stay up, to keep watch. To wait for the silver thread to snap. But there are flowers in her belly and her nose, and warmth in her gullet, and very faintly, from the folds of Caduceus’ cloak, the smell of burnt sage and moss. It’s a comforting smell—a bit like Nila, a bit like the open wilderness. A bit like a warm hearth, with a rug laid out resplendent and a kettle on the hob.

“Yeah, all right. Thanks again, Mr. Clay.” She tests it against the roof of her mouth. “Nah, I like Caddy better.”

Caduceus huffs a silent laugh and folds his hands over his belly. “We will see. Good night, Beau. Sleep well and dreamless, and wake ready to fight another day.”

It feels weirdly like a benediction, or maybe a prayer, but Beau is too tired to parse the difference. She wraps herself in her coat and curls up with her back to Caduceus’ knee. Shuts her eyes.

Tomorrow is another day.


End file.
